Feeling discouraged with Chinese?

[davoosh]

Hello,

 

I have been thinking about this topic for a while, and I thought I'd see if anyone has similar experiences.

 

I have been studying Chinese for 7+ years now in varying periods of intensity, including a year in China. I found that my year in China did help me progress very quickly especially with listening and speaking (Chinese roommate, Chinese social life, etc.). However, that was a good few years ago now and my language ability has probably deteriorated quite a bit.

 

I am still able to hold conversations on every day matters and understand most of what natives say and I think my accent is reasonable. But a few experiences over the past year or so have made me rethink Chinese.

 

I recently spent a few months in Spain - I had also studied Spanish for quite a few years, but not as intensely as Chinese. I was surprised to find out that after a few weeks intense study and getting 'back into' Spanish, I was able to more or less join in group conversations with natives (even with strong Andalucian accents), understand jokes and generally just feel more comfortable with the language. I realise this is mostly due to European languages being a lot more similar and more cultural similarities, etc., but I never felt that I could fully join in group conversations in rapid native Chinese and make relevant comments.

 

This left me feeling that, unless I were to live in China for several years and force myself to actively study and get to grips with major cultural works, I'll never a reach a level similar to that which I could with European languages.

 

 

 

[renzhe]

Ha!

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/31224-this-is-a-rant/

Let me put it another way. I started reading "Water Margin" some time ago. Then I taught myself Portuguese and finished a 500-page book in Portuguese (Saramago's Convento, really recommended) before I got to the end of "Water Margin".

So yeah, Chinese is hard. That's why we love it.

[Demonic_Duck]

I've heard similar complaints from a former co-worker, who incidentally had very good Spanish, but hadn't really managed to get his Chinese learning off the ground.

 

Personally I've never put all that much effort into learning one of those "easy" European languages - at school I had a lackadaisical attitude to foreign language learning (young and foolish as I was), and since then I've only made brief forays into the world of French. I'm well aware that there is a huge disparity in terms of difficulty, but Chinese is still my strongest non-English language by far.

[Geiko]

Davoosh, you reminded me of a book I read last year:

 

 

"How hard is to learn Chinese, really? I was flipping through the channels on Chinese TV one day, and I paused at a travel program for Chinese tourists about Spain. It was partly in Spanish and partly in Chinese. I watched for a while and then realized, a bit heartsick, that after two years of being in China, I could understand more Spanish than Chinese - and the closest I had ever come to studying Spanish was French!"

 

From Dreaming in Chinese, by Deborah Fallows (page 183).

 

When I was a teenager I studied German for one year, and finally gave it up because it was "too hard". Then I switched to Italian, and in a couple of months I was able to read novels for native people. Now that I've been studying Chinese for four years, and can only read books for teenagers, I keep asking to myself: was German that hard? 

[Guest realmayo]

davoosh, I feel your pain! Living outside China, doing a bit of study here and there after work in the evenings, my progress is extremely slow, it's more maintenance than improvement. Learning a difficult language completely different from your own, when you're not in a country where it's typically spoken, in your spare time, it must be difficult, whether it's Chinese or Arabic or whatever. Sometimes I think there's not much point trying, after a certain level anyway, and I should just wait until I get a chance to spend a  year studying full-time, or living in China. Clearly some people have made good progress though. Personally I think the only thing for me worth doing is to brute-force some reading, and perhaps listening/TV too. Trying to learn new things to the point where I can internalise them and use them in spontaneous speech, where they become solidly-learned -- I'm not sure that's realistic currently.

[xiaojiang216]

Thanks, davoosh, for posting this topic - I have been having similar thoughts just recently!

 

While I have been working in China for almost a year now, I find that my Chinese is nothing like what it was when I studied in an immersive program in 2010. For less than 6 months, I spoke nothing but Chinese and took language classes daily. After just a few months into the program, I felt very comfortable with the langauge, rarely ever made any mistakes with pronunciation, and expressed myself quite freely. I even think I could read faster than I can now.

 

At my current job, I am required to speak to students in English, but communicate with coworkers in Chinese. I can't figure out if it's because I've become harder on myself or have an increased awareness from 6, 7, 8 years of study, but I feel like my Chinese sucks. I often struggle to find the right words, find myself making stupid mistakes, and sometimes slipping in pronunciation. Perhaps the latter has to do with the local dialect?

 

That said, if I have made any improvement at all, it has probably been in understanding non-standard Chinese. But other than that, I really need to take some time outside of work to study more intensely like I used to. At age 24, it almost feels like (linguistically) I am a retired athlete that can't make it through one lap! 大家一起加油吧！

[renzhe]

I can't figure out if it's because I've become harder on myself or have an increased awareness from 6, 7, 8 years of study...

It's usually the latter, and it's very common, in my experience. A part of it is due to information overload and your brain trying to take it all in.

Also, your performance varies depending on the day, on your mood, on how tired you are, etc.

The best way to check is to try something difficult at regular intervals and see if there is progress. Tracking progress on a day-to-day basis does not work.

[Ruben von Zwack]

Xiaojiang216, I suspect your current problem may also partially come from being forced to switch between different languages throughout the day.

[xiaojiang216]

Thanks, renzhe and Ruben, I think those are all very true (and also reassuring)!

 

I think having to switch between languages is definitely a major factor, which makes it difficult to absorb things and make noticeable practice. I wonder, though, if one's ability to switch between languages with ease is an indicator of one's proficiency/mastery of both languages? Or perhaps everyone gets mixed up now and then.

 

At any rate, it is always nice to come to this forum to find the camaraderie and motivation to keep going

[davoosh]

It's 'nice' to see people have similar experiences. I agree it's probably due to not being around Chinese daily in an intense environment as well as Chinese just being a difficult language. I find as well that it's harder to truly enjoy some Chinese TV shows and books because a lot of cultural references are lost on me, whereas with Spanish and other European languages there is already a large shared pool of 'cultural background' which makes it a lot easier to enjoy native materials.

[Kelby]

My language skills only really cliked for me after I met my soon to be wife, who has never felt in the least but inclined to speak English with me. Up until meeting her and getting pretty well glued at the hip, studying Chinese was a horrendous struggle when in country, and a disheartening lesson in loss when in the west.

Getting fluent in Chinese has been more a lifestyle change than a project for me...

I think you can ameliorate the difficulty factor with the proper infrastructure though. Having a good bank of friends and acquaintances to talk to is a bare minimum for doing anything other than treading water if you ask me. You have to kind of ride the waves of success and despair when they come :/